Eugene H. Peterson Quotes
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Pity can be nearsighted and condescending; shared suffering can be dignifying and life-changing.
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Praying puts us at risk of getting involved in God's conditions. Be slow to pray. Praying most often doesn't get us what we want but what God wants, something quite at variance with what we conceive to be in our best interests.
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Prayer is the disciplined refusal to act before God acts.
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Waiting means going about our assigned tasks, confident that God will provide the meaning and the conclusions.
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Isn't it interesting that all of the biblical prophets and psalmists were poets?
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Worship is an act that develops feelings for God, not a feeling for God that is expressed in an act of worship.
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Sabbath is that uncluttered time and space in which we can distance ourselves from our own activities enough to see what God is doing.
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We've all met a certain type of spiritual person. She's a wonderful person. She loves the Lord. She prays and reads the Bible all the time. But all she thinks about is herself. She's not a selfish person. But she's always at the center of everything she's doing.
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Count yourself lucky, how happy you must be - you get a fresh start, your slate's wiped clean. Count yourself lucky - God holds nothing against you and you're holding nothing back from Him.
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If you keep the Sabbath, you start to see creation not as somewhere to get away from your ordinary life, but a place to frame an attentiveness to your life.
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There is nothing terribly difficult in the Bible - at least in a technical way. The Bible is written in street language, common language. Most of it was oral and spoken to illiterate people. They were the first ones to receive it. So when we make everything academic, we lose something.
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Pity is one of the noblest emotions available to human beings; self-pity is possibly the most ignoble . . . . It is an incapacity, a crippling emotional disease that severely distorts our perception of reality . . . a narcotic that leaves its addicts wasted and derelict.
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I believe God takes the things in our lives - family, background, education - and uses them as part of his calling. It might not be to become a pastor. But I don't think God wastes anything.
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O God, when my faith gets overladen with dust, blow it clean with the wind of your Spirit. When my habits of obedience get stiff and rusty, anoint them with the oil of your Spirit. Restore the enthusiasm of my first love for you.
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Stories are verbal acts of hospitality.
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The role of the pastor is to embody the gospel. And of course to get it embodied, which you can only do with individuals, not in the abstract.
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You don't make your words true by embellishing them with religious lace. In making your speech sound more religious, it becomes less true.
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The most important thing a pastor does is stand in a pulpit every Sunday and say, 'Let us worship God.' If that ceases to be the primary thing I do in terms of my energy, my imagination, and the way I structure my life, then I no longer function as a pastor.
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The life of faith is a daily exploration of the constant and countless ways in which Gods grace and love are expereinced.
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It is easier to find guides, someone to tell you what to do, than someone to be with you in a discerning, prayerful companionship as you work it out yourself. This is what spiritual direction is.
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When you are part of a megachurch you have no responsibility to anybody else.
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Pastors are highly susceptible to the sin of sloth.
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Jesus almost never talked in terms of explaining. He was always using enigmatic stories and difficult metaphors. He was always pulling people into some kind of participation.
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The vocation of pastor has been replaced by the strategies of religious entrepreneurs with business plans.